Weird ways

The question "Who's the oddball?" is not only fascinating but also politically significant (13 November, p 42). The WEIRD - western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic - people the article describes are behind a lot of western, particularly American, policy towards China: and a dangerous policy it is, too.

WEIRD people, Laura Spinney tells us, "have more of a sense of existing as autonomous individuals than do people from East Asia, who are more likely to see themselves as inseparable components of a larger community". The west's highly vocal support for the awarding of the Nobel peace prize to human rights activist Liu Xiabo, defended by the chair of the Norwegian Nobel committee, Thorbjorn Jagland, in The New York Times on 23 October, was typically WEIRD.